256GB SATA III SSD comparison

[danrok]

Six 256GB SATA III SSDs compared side-by-side.

Models include OCZ Vertex 4, OCZ Vertex 3, Crucial M4, Samsung 840 Pro Series, Samsung 830 Pro Series, and Kingston V200.

All are 2.5 inch form factor.

Chart here: http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/c...omparison.html

[Aedan]

Oh, how ugly is that! Vertex 4 and Samsung 840 Pro both support "256-bit AES-compliant" (Whatever "compliant" means anyhow) encryption, but doesn't give you any tools to manage it. So, your "256-bit encryption" is really only as strong as an ATA password, which is a lot less strength than 256bits!

[danrok]

What is the best solution for someone who needs 256-bit AES encryption?

[Daniel ~]

Originally Posted by Aedan

Oh, how ugly is that! Vertex 4 and Samsung 840 Pro both support "256-bit AES-compliant" (Whatever "compliant" means anyhow) encryption, but doesn't give you any tools to manage it. So, your "256-bit encryption" is really only as strong as an ATA password, which is a lot less strength than 256bits!

How hard for them to make this right?

[Daniel ~]

Nothing less than a huge difference in power consumption...wonder why?

[Aedan]

Originally Posted by danrok

What is the best solution for someone who needs 256-bit AES encryption?

Quick answer: It depends. If you want SSD, then you've got little choice. If it's just you, and you don't mind the fact that if you forget your password all your data will be inaccessible, then use a long passphrase/password (>10chars) on existing SSDs. That's the simple use case, which is all that these encrypting SSD drives appear to be able to offer.

If it's multiple people and lots of pain if a password is forgotten, then you'd need some way of managing stuff. The guys who work on the ATA specs have an entire specification for managing encryption and encrypted partitions on a disk. None of the SSD controllers currently support that, so you'd end up back with rotating media again, because there are traditional hard disks that support fully managed encryption.

If you have to comply with government regulations or demonstrate that you really do encrypt data, then you'll need a drive that is certified (IE, it actually implements AES properly, uses strong key generation and secure key storage). The main standard for this is FIPS 140-2. Once again you're back to rotating media.

[danrok]

Originally Posted by Daniel ~

Nothing less than a huge difference in power consumption...wonder why?

The specifications are pulled from the manufacturer's websites. But, I suspect that they're not quoting the exact same figures.

Just looking in to it further. For example, here's some measurements for the Crucial M4:

http://www.storagereview.com/images/...wer_values.png

Quite different to Crucial's 0.15W.

[danrok]

And power consumption for the OCZ Vertex 4:
http://www.storagereview.com/images/...wer_values.png

It seems to uses a bit more power than the Crucial M4, but is faster.

[Daniel ~]

Just so it's not waste, power for speed seems far.":O}